The Rules of the Game

125 comedy movies covering 125 years of film history. One movie per year. One year per episode.

On the face of it, it seemed simple enough. But, I soon began to realize I needed to create a more defined playing field. This would be for the sake of my own sanity, if nothing else, and to hopefully anticipate some potential listener questions/concerns. It would make sense if these are indeed frequently asked questions from new arrivals to this project because they are the very questions that first jumped to my mind when I began drafting the idea. Here goes:

WHAT QUALIFIES AS A COMEDY?

For the most part, I’m going to be pretty liberal on this, but if most of the reference sources and critics identify the movie’s genre as a comedy or some sort of comedy hybrid (e.g., action comedy, comedy-drama, dark comedy, comedy-sci fi, etc.), I’ll consider it. And, humor is often an important device found in other genres (action and horror, for example), but that doesn’t necessarily mean that every action film or horror film is also a comedy, even if the hero has a lot of great one-liners throughout. I’m going to have to take the “I’ll know it when I see it” approach. For me, the main question will be: is comedy one of the primary intents of the creator or just a means of relieving tension (thus, comic relief) from what is otherwise a very fine thriller/action film/western/slasher flick.

WHAT ABOUT ANIMATED COMEDIES?

I have decided, for better or worse, to not include animation in this 125-year run of films. Not because they aren’t good comedies, in fact they’ve represented some amazing comedies over the years, but I really wanted to focus on live-action comedy. That doesn’t mean animation won’t be discussed at various points in the conversations, but it will be unlikely that a purely animated film would be the featured movie of a future episode.

IS THIS AN ATTEMPT TO CREATE A “TOP 125 COMEDIES OF ALL TIME” LIST?

Dear Lord, no. That would be madness. This isn’t even an attempt to identify the top comedy/best comedy/most influential comedy, etc., of any given year. The films I end up choosing to feature in their given years are most likely to be reflective of a theme or topic that I want to discuss in the evolution of comedy. This might mean that we’ll be looking at a particular film because I think it is a good representation of the work of a person I want to discuss in depth (writer, director, actor, etc.), or because it represents something going on in the zeitgeist of its era, or it represents an innovation in the way comedy and/or film is presented, or any number of reasons. I can’t promise that every film will be the best comedy film of its year. I can’t even realistically promise that some of the films will be very good at all. There may very well be a few stinkers in the bunch, or films whose messaging has not held up well over time. But, it’s also likely that is the reason I chose it for that episode, because it’s a good conversation to have sometimes.

ARE YOU ONLY LOOKING AT AMERICAN FILMS?

Nope. Comedy film got its start in France and has always been an international creation. While I acknowledge that Hollywood contributes a significant amount of output, I am interested to see how other cultures have tackled the issue of putting comedy on film and how that has all filtered down to today’s world over time. So, I hope that amongst the 125 films to be discussed we’ll get an opportunity to leave Hollywood from time to time to see what was/is happening around the world.

SO, IS THIS JUST A MOVIE REVIEW PODCAST OR A PODCAST WHERE YOU RIFF ON A MOVIE?

No. While there will likely be some amount of brief review and synopsis of the film at the beginning of the discussion, to help people who have not seen the film, this is really not intended as strictly a movie review podcast. How do you even do a review of a 40-second film from 1895 that isn’t 10 times longer than the movie itself? And, no we won’t be riffing on the movie or otherwise watching the movie during the episode. We’ll have watched the episode (separately most likely given the current conditions) and then having a conversation revolving around that film and related topics during the episode.

WHO IS THIS “WE” THAT YOU KEEP MENTIONING?

I’ll be hosting the episodes and getting the conversation started, but to have a conversation, I’ll need guests. My hope is you’ll get to hear me in conversations with people in a position to help teach me about the things I’m curious about, namely: how comedy films have evolved over time, who helped shape those evolutions, and what those films have to teach us about our past, present, and possibly future. I’m reaching out to a number of guests, including people in the worlds of cinema studies, film collectors and archivists, critics, filmmakers, historians, pop culture experts, niche topic experts, and more. I’m also inviting guests to be a part of the conversation from the world of comedy. These might include improvisational performers, stand-ups, musical comedians, comedy writers across various media, and more.

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I think that pretty well covers it for now and hopefully it gives you a better sense of what I’m trying to do. I hope you’ll subscribe to the Acting Funny podcast when it debuts later this year and, in the meantime, hope you’ll subscribe to the newsletter (link in the footer below and elsewhere on the website) to get updates on when the podcast is debuting, where you’ll be able to listen to it, announcement of guests, and more. Thanks!

If you missed the first blog post introducing myself and the whole Acting Funny concept, feel free to read “Why I’m Taking Comedy Films Seriously” when you have a moment.

Why I’m Taking Comedy Films Seriously

Look, I get it. Starting a podcast in 2020 about the history of comedy films might come across as a bit tone deaf, given that the news for much of this year has delivered seemingly nothing but anxiety, tragedy, injustice, and absurdity at a breakneck pace. And that’s just any random Tuesday.

But, perhaps that’s the best time to turn to comedy. Not merely as an escape from the daily stresses, although it admirably serves that purpose, but also because comedy can be a useful tool to help us understand the world we inhabit. At least, that’s the basis of the question I asked myself that inspired this podcast: what can learning the history of comedy films teach me about comedy, about film, and about who we are? And, as I’ll illustrate in a moment, that’s the sort of question I love to ask myself about nearly any bit of pop culture or history that captures my attention for an extended moment of time.

While the question sounds academic in nature, let me take this moment to point out that I am not an academic (but I am a big fan of such and hope to convince actual academics to join me as guests in these conversations). I am not an expert in any capacity on any of this. I don’t hold any degrees in film studies or related topics (although I did take a very enjoyable Intro to Film Studies elective many decades ago in my sophomore year of college). In fact, I don’t hold any degrees at all. And, while I have a great love of comedy films, I know that my knowledge of their history and evolution is superficial at best: trivial facts filled in by random biographies and essays I may have read here or there and bits of info gleaned from the hosts of Turner Classic Movies as they introduced the next film of the day’s schedule. That’s more or less the point, though. I want to teach myself whatever I can learn that will take me beyond merely knowing the household names (Chaplin, Keaton, the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, etc.) and gaining a better understanding of how the people who made us laugh in the past have influenced what makes us laugh today.

And so, when the pandemic gave me some unexpected free time by putting an end to my nights of driving around the Southeastern US performing stand-up comedy in bars, breweries, comedy theaters, festivals, and at least one vacant lot, I reached into the back of my mind where this question about comedy film history had been fermenting and decided to act upon it. I got my hands on some cinema studies textbooks. I found essays on the early film pioneers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I followed YouTube rabbit holes of old movies and discovered online collections maintained by the Library of Congress and other libraries, museums, and archives. As I became more fascinated by what I was learning, I realized that perhaps other people might enjoy it, too.

I’ve kind of done something like this before, to be honest. Something in my wiring leads me to it. Since my childhood, when I have found a topic that really captures my interest, I usually have come to a point when I want to learn as much as possible what led to the genesis of that topic. My mother introduced me to Elvis Presley’s music when I was very young. And when I got old enough to get my own records, I wanted to learn more about how his sound came to be. Soon, with the help of a trusty library card and some spare change earned from a newspaper route, I was getting my hands regularly on LPs containing rockabilly, rhythm and blues, and then blues, before working my way forward again chronologically. Before I knew it, I was the kid in middle school with a weird knowledge of jazz and big band music, whose record collection hopscotched among musical selections bound to no single decade or genre. When I found a favorite author, I would usually ask a teacher who that author liked and then set about reading those works, too. In the 1990s, I found myself working for a regional historical society, and soon realized my odd way of deconstructing a topic of interest worked quite nicely as a means of using pop culture topics to teach public history. Living in the football-mad southeastern US, I took an interest in the history of college football and used that to curate a museum exhibit and lecture series on how the history of college football both reflected and played a role in shaping the culture of East Tennessee. (The exhibit and lecture series were called “The Spirit of the Hill: Football in the Culture of East Tennessee.”) My favorite such project was the creation of a self-guided walking tour of downtown Knoxville, that played upon my interests in regional history, music history, and my previous professional experience in radio, to highlight Knoxville’s role in the development of country music. (If you’re ever in Knoxville, the Cradle of Country Music Walking Tour is still there waiting for you to enjoy.) I loved the opportunity to dive backwards in time and to find ways to share what I had learned myself.

Which brings us all back to this. As a comedian (by the way, you’ve never heard of me and that’s alright as I’m pretty low on the scale of comedians, but you can go to my comedy website to learn more about that part of my life), I was quite aware of podcasts, but had mostly resisted the urge to create one. But podcasting seemed an ideal medium for me to share this. And once I realized that 2020 was the 125th anniversary of the first comedy film’s first public screening, I knew what I wanted to do. So, Acting Funny, was born (with some great assistance from my wife in helping me choose a name). Each episode will look at one year, moving in chronological order from 1895 forward, focusing on one film from that year. I’m inviting guest experts to join me each episode for a discussion of that film and that year, to see what I (and you) can learn about how comedy and film have helped us move forward.

So, that’s the plan at least. And, this post hopefully explains a bit about me and why I wanted to do this. In the next post, I’ll explain more of the “ground rules” of how I hope to keep this thing on the tracks. Thanks for reading this far if you did. I hope you’ll stick around and be a part of the launch this December for the first episode. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to the newsletter (you’ll find a submission form at the bottom of this page) where you can find out when I’m launching the first episode and where you can find the podcast on your device.